Health beliefs and illness attitudes as predictors of breast cancer screening attendance

Background: This paper considers the breast cancer screening programme in t he autonomous community of Navarre, Northern Spain. Women from different ar eas of Northern, Central and Southern Navarre are Involved. Methods: A samp le of 512 women participants and 196 non-participants was taken from a tota l of 60,908 women between 45 and 65 years of age who received an invitation to attend the breast cancer screening programme. The participants were ask ed to fill in an individual structured questionnaire in their local Health Centre and the non-participants in their homes. This was done retrospective ly. Results: The response rate was 100% for participants and 83.9% for non- participants. This study investigates the attitude profiles of the women at tending mammography mass screening, with non-attending women (matched in ed ucational and occupational levels) as controls. Subjects were assessed on d imensions such as attitudes towards health and illness. The results support Rosenstock's 1974 model that perceived severity of breast cancer and perce ived susceptibility to breast cancer are related to participation in screen ing. Furthermore, results demonstrated that hypochondriacal beliefs, diseas e phobia and feared effects of symptoms were related to decreased participa tion levels. Conclusion: This study has explored the implication of health belief attitudes and the attitudes toward illness variables with women's pa rticipation in a breast cancer screening programme. It assesses the relativ e contribution of these variables to levels of participation, and the resul ts of the study indicate that belief sets and attitudes are important compo nents of women's cancer prevention behaviours.